Fifty Shades of Grey 

By E. L. James

Paperback, 514 pages

Series: Fifty Shades #1

Published on: April 3rd 2012 (first published 2011)

Publisher:  Vintage / Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group 

ISBN: 0345803485 

 Blurb:  When literature student Anastasia Steele is drafted to interview the successful young entrepreneur Christian Grey for her campus magazine, she finds him attractive, enigmatic and intimidating. Convinced their meeting went badly, she tries to put Grey out of her mind - until he happens to turn up at the out-of-town hardware store where she works part-time. 

The unworldly, innocent Ana is shocked to realize she wants this man, and when he warns her to keep her distance it only makes her more desperate to get close to him. Unable to resist Ana’s quiet beauty, wit, and independent spirit, Grey admits he wants her - but on his own terms.

Shocked yet thrilled by Grey's singular erotic tastes, Ana hesitates. For all the trappings of success – his multinational businesses, his vast wealth, his loving adoptive family – Grey is a man tormented by demons and consumed by the need to control. When the couple embarks on a passionate, physical and daring affair, Ana learns more about her own dark desires, as well as the Christian Grey hidden away from public scrutiny.

Can their relationship transcend physical passion? Will Ana find it in herself to submit to the self-indulgent Master? And if she does, will she still love what she finds?

Before I start the review, I’d like to clarify why on earth I even thought to read this one. A month ago I saw the name of the book in the Bestsellers’ list on Flipkart. As usual, I judged the book by its cover and didn’t read the blurb. I presumed that it was a self help book about being successful at business or something. E L James, I thought, was some top-notch businessman. After checking Barnes and Nobles a few days later, I saw all the three books of the Fifty Shades trilogy on the number one, two and three of the Bestsellers’ list. I thought the business man has penned down his entire life’s experiences in the three books. I downloaded a Kindle copy of the book.

I am a self-help lover. I wanted to read it as soon as my exams ended. When they ended, I was searching Goodreads lists of High School Romance and suddenly I saw, a list said ‘Best Erotic Romance Fiction’ and guess what? Fifty Shades trilogy again topped the list. The curiosity of what could make an Erotica a bestseller killed me and I started reading Fifty Shades of Grey.

The book starts when Anastasia Steele does her sick friend, Kate, a favour by going to interview a hotshot businessman Christian Grey for the college paper. He finds her intriguing and she in turn finds him very charming and handsome. Almost immediately, Ana falls in love with Christian Grey.

There’s nothing good about the book that is to be discussed. This book was a torture to go through. I didn’t read it all. I couldn’t. After I read about twenty percent of the book, I wanted to puke. Then and there, I deleted the file from my computer. And for two whole days after that, whenever I thought about the last page I read, I literally felt like gagging.

Just as I started the book, I found the dialogue formation awkward. I had never read dialogues so poorly written. Next, what I realised was that the author was very, very repetitive. The vocabulary of the author seemed too limited. But over a few pages, when the vocabulary had developed, repetition had taken other forms. I detested the author’s writing style. It’s juvenile and not even average.

The characters are poorly developed. Many scenes have directly been taken from the Twilight books. The author should be charged with serious plagiarism. I had my first WTF moment when I was reading about all those rules and a bit later on when Ana lost her virginity. This was so not at all romantic or sensual. It was dirty. Absolutely filthy!

The author has shown her filthy mind by promoting BDSM in the book. But what is worse is that she doesn’t even know how to write filth! When Ana tells Christian that she’s a virgin, he says that they need to “fix it up”. Fix it up? As if being a virgin was a disorder! There are many gross things shown in the book that no-one doing the BDSM can even imagine.

The contract thingy that James has done, is absolute shit! She’s shown as if it was not BDSM but some underworld activity.

Anastasia was a foolish, stupid, idiotic, dumb, nonsense and dung-headed girl. She has no sense of decision or anything at all. The only thing that she has is her maddening inner goddess that drives the reader crazy after every other paragraph. James is so damn repetitive!

Christian is an ass! He’s possessive, proud, arrogant.. ah, he is a psycho. I hated him like anything. He’s got brain damage apparently, that James has forgotten to mention in the book.

It torments me to even think about it. The last thing I’d want to say is that don’t, don’t even think of reading this. It is neither worth time, nor money. If you like Romance or even Erotica, go figure out something else. This is absolute waste of everything!

Review originally published on:  http://vaultofbooks.com/f/review-fifty-shades-of-grey

A Coupla Shades of Taupe: A Parody

A Coupla Shades of Taupe: A Parody

By Court Burback

Kindle Edition

Published On: June 18th 2012

Publisher:  Diversion Books

ASIN: B008FDN8F8

Blurb:  Pagan Taupe is the wealthiest man in all of Arkansas. He’s got a home with a working refrigerator, a private rickshaw driver, and a respected empire of taxidermy/fro-yo chain stores. The only thing that’s missing is a whiny young co-dependent named Alexandra Aluminum. From the moment he sees her tripping over an angry raccoon, it’s clear that Alexandra dills his pickle. Pagan becomes obsessed with 

Alexandra at a level normally portrayed by Rob Lowe in Lifetime movies. But unlike Rob Lowe, Pagan doesn’t want to beat her with a tire iron and bury her beneath the town bridge—he wants to make her his live-in sex slave.

After I read Fifty Shades of Grey, and posted a few hate messages to E. L James on her Twitter handle, I still couldn’t stop making fun of the book. Yes, I admit, the hours I spent reading FSOG are the ones I’ll always loathe.

After a month of reading it, there came a savior to get my life back on track after reading FSOG- It was Court Burback with her book A Coupla Shades of Taupe.

But if eager young Alexandra wants to feel the caress of Pagan’s ear hair against her cheek, she’s going to have to play by his rules. When Pagan reveals the special room he’s built to live out his sexual proclivities, Alexandra’s natural reaction is to cold cock him and call the police. But the clown chained to the wall assures Alexandra that Pagan is a stand-up guy, and if she gives him a chance he can introduce her to a world of unimaginable pleasure. Alexandra takes the leap and agrees to be Pagan’s unquestioning “submissive,” and the two embark on a sexual journey that would make Gloria Steinem put a loaded gun to her temple.

A COUPLA SHADES OF TAUPE is a romantic, tender tale of blossoming emotions and hardcore schtupping. A Pulitzer is inevitable.

As the name says, it is a parody of the record breaking, crappy bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey. The action of the spoof starts right from the name of the book. After that there’s no stopping. While Anastasia Steel dies over the looks of the rich and young entrepreneur Christian Grey in FSOG, in ACSOT, you’d find Alexandra Aluminum’s heart captured by the wealthy Pagan Taupe who plays the dominant in their BDSM relationship.

The book has a slow start, but after just a few pages, I was laughing into my palm, because it was that funny. My ribs hurt. Soon after ten or so pages, I had a million of “WTF!” moments at the awkward situations Pagan and Alex created. Ahead of that, it made me laugh like mad.

There’s nothing about FSOG that the author has not made fun of in the book. Be it their names, the incidents, the characters or the novel on the whole, you have everything to chuckle at. The best part of it was the spoof at E. L. James and her writing style. That absolutely cracked me up. I’ll quote a few examples:

“I’m sorry if I came off as a bit…controlling,” he says with a mischievous grin. “But I’m a man that enjoys exerting control, you see. And I believe that there are those that would actually enjoy relinquishing their will to feed my—” He sighs. “I don’t know how many other ways there are to insinuate that I like control, Miss Aluminum. But it’s important that someone, say, a bored, sexually frustrated housewife, understand that we’re blatantly and unimaginatively setting up a future sexual dynamic here.”

____

 My eyes drift around the office. The room is cold, clean, and clinical, and, like his garments, bathed in colors that a lazy romance novelist might describe to insinuate his personality.

_____

 He nods. “Alexandra, do you know that it’s been, like, two whole pages since we had sex?”

My eyes widen. “Really? Shit.”

 “Should I just, I don’t know…do you on the desk or something?”

“Yeah. That’s cool.”

I bend over the desk and Pagan pulls out his pork sword and whispers generic sexy things and then velvet caresses, moans of ecstasy, castles in the sky, blah blah blah. Five minutes later he’s sprawled naked on a couch scarfing a hoagie and watching Say Yes to the Dress.

_____

 Pagan sighs. “Alexandra, this is my sister Mina. She’s another fairly forgettable character and only appears in this one scene.”

There are hardly many writers, I believe, that can pull as good a comedy as Ms. Burback. Be it Alex’s syphilis stricken friend Candy, the ‘Sometimes Girlfriend’ goat of Pagan, the tied up clown Bill, or the human rickshaw that Pagan gifts Alex, Ms. Burback gives you something to giggle at in every single paragraph.

I hate comparing authors, but since we are talking about a lampoon here, I’d like to tell you that while FSOG was gross and erotic, ACSOT is a hilarious tale of the sexual tragedies and comedies of Alex and Pagan’s relationship.

Ms. Burback has a graceful writing style of her own, and the way E. L James writes is not even worth the comparison. ACSOT, unlike FSOG, is very well written, well edited and not repetitive at all.

I’m sure that you will crack-up after reading A Coupla Shades of Taupe, if you read and Hated FSOG. Even if you haven’t read it, you would surely have a nice laugh reading the book.

Nevertheless, I do not recommend this for FSOG lovers. They better wait for E. L James’ next, while I will be looking forward to the coming works of Ms. Burback.

I wish her good luck with the book!

Review originally published on: http://vaultofbooks.com/bplus/review-a-coupla-shades-of-taupe-a-parody